Battleplan #1

Welcome to the first edition of the Battleborn Battleplan! Each week, we’ll update the community on the latest happenings in Battleborn, shine a spotlight on some of the great things you all are doing, detail our weekly hotfixes, and maybe even offer some insight on what’s to come. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

Battleborn has officially launched and the future is looking pretty bright. Is it the shining and endless possibilities? Is it a classic “sky’s the limit” mentality? Sure, we guess so, but what’s really got everyone squinting are these shiny golden skins earned by the community during our open beta challenges! We tasked you all with some pretty steep challenges:

Complete 1 million Competitive Multiplayer matches

Complete 1 million Story Mode episodes

Collect 15 billion Shards

We knew with such high goals, we’d need to come prepared with some pretty sweet rewards. We decided the only thing that would do this challenge justice would be golden skins for Benedict, ISIC, and Shayne & Aurox. As we expected, you guys totally crushed it and made it look like a walk in the park! The final numbers were pretty impressive:

Over 1,400,000 Story Mode episodes completed going solo or with up to a 5-player co-op team

A whopping 27 BILLION Shards collected

….and you did all of this in LESS THAN 5 DAYS! In case you played in the beta but missed it, below is the SHiFT code we released on launch day to allow you to unlock the skins in your Command Menu. The code is only usable once, but will still be active for a while longer:

SWKTB-356W6-XC5RJ-XK6T3-HJ333

As you can imagine, a lot goes into supporting a competitive multiplayer game. Maintaining a level playing field can be tricky, but it’s something that our team is committed to doing. With that said, every week, a part of the Battleborn Battleplan will be dedicated detailing the latest hotfixes that we’ve added to improve the overall experience. Here are this week’s hotfixes:

Galilea:

We took a good look at Galilea’s damage and found that she still has the ability to kill players in a short amount of time. We want to promote the health regeneration and zone control loops so we reduced damage some more. The Shield Throw skill was set to a high damage multiplier which we usually award to skills that deal damage only. Since the Shield Throw has a stun, we reduced the damage to match other skills that contain crowd control on top of damage.

Reduced Galilea’s Great Sword damage by 18%

Reduced Shield Throw damage by 33%

Miko:

Miko's ability to heal others and itself at the same time proved to enable duos of players to dive enemies without much risk. Now, Miko players will have to navigate spaces with more precision and rely on allies to peel off enemies more often instead of being able to just turn and run away.

Reduced the movement speed bonus of Miko’s level 7 Left Helix Augment, Fight or Flight, to 15% and its duration to 2s

Reduced the healing effect of Biosynthesis by 25%

ISIC:

ISIC's Rotating Wards allowed ISIC to soak lots of damage while dealing lots of damage. The reduction of Rotating Wards’ strength gives enemies a faster window to prevent ISIC from controlling the area. In addition, ISIC players could manipulate their shield regen easily with the first augmentation and some gear pieces so we reduced the augmentation strength. And since ISIC has so many defensive options, we wanted players to be able to quickly whittle ISIC down if they got past his defenses so we reduced his base health.

Reduced ISIC’s base health by 20%

Reduced Rotating Wards’ block strength by 50%

Reduced Watchful Wards’ bonus by 40%

Other Notes:

Adjusted skill-based matchmaking ranges to speed up matchmaking times

Fixed a minor audio issue on the Meltdown map, Paradise

Changed all Faction loot packs to unlock at level 15

Reduced the Silver and Gold medal requirements for each medal in the story mission “The Archive” by 20%

Doubled the health of stationary defense objectives in story mode

Made performance improvements on the multiplayer maps Echelon and Coldsnap

We pride ourselves on having one of the best communities out there. There’s nothing more rewarding for our team than to see the amazing things that our games have inspired you all to do and create. Every week we like to recognize a member of the community and showcase the awesome things they’re doing through our Community Badass feature on our forums.

This week, we featured Fistmaster 5000, aka Scott Graham. Scott is a successful Twitch streamer with a passion for not only playing Battleborn, but also for cultivating an incredible community of his own around his streams. You can read more about Scott and how he got started streaming in our Community Badass feature on the Gearbox Forums!